Take This Smog and Shove It (Or Ignore It and Sell the Weather)

Where’s it easier to get candidates to move to, and where’s it harder? That’s a question the search firm Heidrick & Struggles asked 50 of its U.S. search consultants. The least “recruitable” cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit (we’d have posted the results sooner, but we were stuck in LA traffic).

The easiest place to get people to move to is Atlanta, followed by Chicago.It depends on the industry. San Francisco did better, for example, for technology, finance, and professional services.

What candidates don’t like is bad schools, bad weather, a bad commute, high housing costs (or trouble selling their current homes) and limited opportunities if you end up leaving the job you’re being recruited for. They also want a good business culture with big companies, partly for job options for the spouse, as well as an airport with good flight options, and as safe a town as they can find.

Living in LA, we can tell you the weather is a plus, though some natives do complain that’s it’s too hot when it’s over 75 and too cold when it’s under 74. But with so many folks we know looking to flee the city because of the schools, as well as having a tough time with underwater homes, we get all that.

An Embarrassment of Riches

With all the whining about how hard it is to find quality hires we thought we were in a parallel universe when we read that the supply of “extremely bright, qualified, and eager candidates is so high that it is nearly problematic.”

If Sally Ezra was recruiting English or history majors that would be one thing. But she’s talking about actuaries. Seriously! We didn’t even know what an actuary was until Google incorrectly auto-completed a search term for us a while back. Sally, though, says companies who hire these professionals are finding they have the enviable job of pouring through dozens of high-quality applicants for every job they post.

Don’t you just wish you had that problem?

Leave the Recruiting to Us

Ever gone to a recruiting conference and been told that it’s “the whole organization’s responsibility to recruit” and that “at our organization, everyone’s a recruiter”?

Well, a new video from Notre Dame tells people that not everyone’s a recruiter. It’s meant to dissuade every Tom, Dick, and Harry from recruiting for Notre Dame. Enjoy.

Recruiting 101

Quiz: Here are a few tips we’ve pulled from a blog post. What’s the topic?

Focus on helping your recruit reach their objectives.

Try to ask one amazing question at the beginning of each new type of contact.

not everyone in an organisation is a recruiter but they should be an advocate of the company and they are massively under-used as resource in this way. Recruiters can’t give an authentic picture of what it’s really like to work at their company – after all they are selling it to candidates.

Engaged employees will give picture of the culture that will be much more trusted that advertising and recruiters. If you’re a good employer who looks after your staff you should be embracing this opportunity rather than trying to discourage employees from having conversations.

Stop calling them recruiters, start calling them advocates and make sure they have access to the information they need if they do get into a conversation about current opportunities.

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ERE serves corporate recruiters and talent acquisition professionals by providing news and insights about the recruiting industry, opinions on what's hot in the talent acquisition space, and evaluations on the best technology for recruiting.